


Scars

by KateAtTheClose



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-04
Updated: 2012-12-04
Packaged: 2017-11-20 06:29:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/582304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KateAtTheClose/pseuds/KateAtTheClose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gene muses on the war, Babe, and where the two intercept.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scars

**Author's Note:**

> Set during "Points".

 

Gene woke up slowly; warm, comfortable and snug, he had no urge to wake.  His cheek lay against smooth and soft bare skin, his hand was curled around the sharp jut of a hipbone.  He wanted to remain in this dreamy, half-asleep state indefinitely, fuzzily happy, the steady thrum of a heartbeat gentle against his ear. 

 

He opened his eyes lazily, blinking the thick haze of sleep away.  He turned his face up to see Babe, head tilted back on the pillow, mouth hanging open, sleeping the heavy and deep sleep of the exhausted and recently-sated.  Gene smiled at the sight, trailing his fingers idly over Babe’s bare chest and knowing it wouldn’t wake him.  The sun drifted in from the large window across the room, highlighting the fine hairs dusting his chest and turning them a bright, gleaming gold. 

 

It was beautiful;  _he_  was beautiful.  Gene pressed his lips against the warm, soft skin just under Babe’s collarbone, and was almost able to forget that there was a war still on.

 

The Pacific.  Gene’s mind shied away from the thought of more fighting, more bloodshed, more bandages and syrettes and death, and focused instead on the way the creases of worry in Babe’s forehead smoothed out in sleep. 

 

Gene leaned up on his elbow to look down on Babe, his legs tangled together with the other man’s under the sheets.  The sunlight glinted off Babe’s red hair where it fell in disarray across his forehead and the white of the pillow.  Gene smoothed it gently to the side, brushing his fingers down the curve of Babe’s cheekbone.  Babe made a small noise, still deep in sleep, and tilted his face towards the feel of Gene’s caress.  Gene smiled, indulgent, and gently kissed the corner of Babe’s gaping mouth. 

 

Babe would go to the Pacific, as well.  Gene had been with Easy since Toccoa, but had never been wounded nor received any medals for his service.  He did not have enough points to go home.  Babe was a replacement, and had only been with them since just before Operation Market-Garden, even though it seemed it had been like much longer.  Babe had no purple hearts or bronze stars; he wouldn’t get to go home either.

 

Where would they find the strength and energy to fight again in a whole other part of the world?  It would feel like a whole other war, over there, with a completely different enemy.  Not Krauts, but Japs as the enemy of the day.  Gene wondered where else they would be sent after the Pacific, if they even managed to survive there.  Who would they fight then?  Would the war ever really be over?  Or would it just go on indefinitely, until there were no more young men to kill and the blood couldn’t be washed away?

 

Gene smoothed his fingertips over the flat plane of Babe’s abdomen, over the bronze trail of hair, pausing when they reached the uneven scar on his side.  Babe had never received a purple heart, but that didn’t mean he had never been wounded.  Gene, of all people, could attest to that.  He could still remember the terror he felt when Johnny Martin had yelled for a medic and it was Babe clutching a hand to his bloody side.  Gene had pried the hand away, even as he assured Babe it would be fine,  _he_  would be fine, and had felt relief rush through him when he saw that the bullet had only grazed him and that he had not been lying.

 

Still, the memory rocked him, the fear thick and cloying in his throat.  Gene realized he was twisting the sheet in his hand and dropped it, rubbing his face with his hand instead.  He pulled himself away from Babe, as much as he could in the single bed they had both been sleeping in, and sat on the edge of the mattress.  The sheet gathered over his lap as he placed his face in his hands, chilled for the first time that morning as the Austrian air contacted his bare chest and back. 

 

He had tried not to get too close to the men.  They had warned him, when they handed him a red cross armband and taught him how to heal instead of how to kill, not too get too close to the men in his unit _.  They’ll die_ , they had told him bluntly, as they showed him pictures of what bullets and shrapnel and gas did to the fragile human body.   _And you’ll need to move on to the next man when they do_.  Move on and not feel your soul ripped to shreds, not think that their death was somehow your fault, like you could have somehow prevented it if you’d just run faster, worked quicker, tried harder.

 

Babe had taken one look at the walls Gene had built and quickly and efficiently scaled and leaped over them.  He had made him use his nickname, teased him until he had smiled, brought him food when he was too worried about others to remember himself, dragged him out of his stupor in Bastogne when he was so close to shutting down, looked for him when no one else thought to, and kissed him up against a brick wall in Germany. 

 

He had not torn Gene’s walls down.  He knew Gene needed them.

 

Gene dreaded going back into the chaos of fighting now that he had someone whose life he cared about more than his own.  How could he work on wounded men, when he was busy praying to God to keep Babe safe?

 

Gene felt a hand come to rest on his shoulder and jerked his head up, startled.  Another arm snaked around his chest from behind and Gene felt Babe prop his chin on Gene’s shoulder, Babe’s hair tickling his ear.

 

“Good mornin’.”  Babe said sleepily, his lankly limbs like a warm blanket as they draped themselves around Gene. 

 

Gene smiled, despite himself, turning under Babe’s arms and capturing his lips with his own, kissing him soundly, mouth open and tongue brushing against Babe’s.  His hand slid up to the back of Babe’s head, pressing him closer.  Life, that’s what it felt like: warmth and home and care and desire. 

 

And even as he kissed him, savouring the moment, hating it was only temporary, knowing they would soon have to face the world and Zell Am See, Gene hoped the war wouldn’t make him regret falling in love with Babe Heffron.


End file.
